


Creative License

by Tierfal



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Established Relationship, Fluff, Humor, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-24
Updated: 2013-06-24
Packaged: 2017-12-16 00:11:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/855582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tierfal/pseuds/Tierfal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cas gets a coloring book.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Creative License

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TyndallBlue](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TyndallBlue/gifts).



> ♥♥♥♥

The details of the pastor’s story about the cyclones don’t match up with the stuff in the news reports. If a priest and a journalist walk into a bar, which do you trust to tell you the truth?

“I find this piece of literature baffling,” Cas says from his perch at the foot of the bed.

Dean’s brain was sort of starting to totter around in circles anyway. “What litera…”

Cas holds up his prize by its top corners—and lo, an angel of the Lord has raised _The Bible Buddies Coloring Book_ for scrutiny. Every damn time Dean thinks he’s seen it all…

“What’s so weird about it?” he asks.

Cas sets it down in his lap again and pages through. “Firstly, it appears to be incomplete.”

“That’s the point,” Dean says. “You’re supposed to color it in.”

Cas does the concerned-confused-squinty thing. “Precisely how is that ‘the point’?”

“It’s for kids,” Dean says. “They get to… I dunno, interact with the pictures this way. It’s fun.”

“Fun,” Cas says slowly, like he’s just learning the word.

“Y’know, entertainment,” Dean says. “When some kid is being a brat, you shove a coloring book in his face, and it shuts him up for a couple minutes. That’s why they always put ’em in the kids’ menus at restaurants.”

Cas lifts the book higher this time, opening the cover, tilting it towards the light, and peering at it intently. “Is ‘coloring’ some sort of human compulsion, similar to Sam’s need to recycle?”

“I’m right here,” Sam says loudly.

Cas purses his lips. “The other oddity,” he says, “is that the anecdotes related in the simplistically-worded text are extremely erroneous.”

“What?” Dean says.

“They’re doing the Bible wrong,” Sam translates. “In a coloring book. Imagine _that_.”

“Nevertheless,” Cas says, “I think I would like to attempt this ‘coloring’ endeavor as a means of gaining insight into this phenomenon of the human psyche.”

“Go for it,” Dean says. “There’s a pack of crayons on the back.”

Unsurprisingly, Cas doesn’t telegraph excitement the same way as, y’know, _people_ , but Dean can just barely tell that he’s holding his shoulders tighter under the trenchcoat, and his eyes have gone a little bit more sapphire-facet-focused even than usual. He opens the box of crayons, selects the red one, flips through to one of the more elaborate outlines, and presses the tip of the crayon to the page.

He draws a single line.

He pauses.

“These are highly impractical instruments,” he says. “They require a great deal of applied pressure, and the resultant output of wax is very imprecise.”

“You’re not supposed to do it on your lap,” Dean says. “Try sitting at the table.”

“You should get him some lemonade in a take-home cup,” Sam mutters. “And a balloon.”

Dean doesn’t really have anything to say to that, because he used to fish in the laundromat lint screens for quarters to get Sam all that crap at diners and stuff when they were young. And you could tell Sam secretly loved being like the kids on TV commercials, even just for a couple minutes, so Dean doesn’t regret a damn thing.

Cas settles at the desk, since there are laptops all over the usual formica monstrosity, and hunches over the book, crayon poised.

“Michael never had a vessel who even remotely resembled this image,” he says.

“Creative license,” Dean says.

Cas bends to his task, scrunches up his face in concentration, and slowly and meticulously draws a thick red line from the top left corner of the page to the mathematical center.

“Oh, Christ,” Sam says.

“I have not found Him in this collection yet,” Cas says.

“You’re supposed to color inside the lines,” Dean says.

“There is a great deal of supposing in this process,” Cas says. “I think I am beginning to understand why human children are so psychologically damaged by sets of rules arbitrarily enforced without sufficient logical explana—”

“Let me show you,” Dean says, and he shoves his chair back and goes over and takes Cas’s hand and starts coloring.

“Get a room, guys,” Sam says.

“We are currently occupying a room,” Cas says. “Or do you mean that we should acquire an additional one?”

“I hate you,” Sam says without much venom.

“Shut up,” Dean says.

Sam shoves his laptop into his bag and slings it over his shoulder. “I’m going out,” he says. “For a while. For a long time. Indefinitely.”

“Later, Sammy,” Dean says.

“I hope that you have more ‘fun’ than I have had ‘coloring’,” Cas says, and Dean hates that he can _hear_ the bad air-quotes nowadays.

“Yeah,” Sam says, bitchfacing like there’s no tomorrow. “Thanks a bunch.”

The door slams.

Cas contemplates the green crayon. “Is Sam angry because he is the only member of our current party who is not ‘getting laid’?”

“ _I heard that_!” Sam shouts.

“Stop lurking!” Dean shouts back.

“ _You suck_!”

Cas frowns. “Statistically, I am more often in the positi—”

“ _Augh_!”

Sam’s giant feet go pounding off away from the window, and Dean turns to Cas.

“One of these days,” he says, “we’ve got to have a long talk about boundaries.”

“Humans,” Cas says, straightening the crayons on the desk. “You tell lies, you depict things wrongly, you speak of ‘creative license’—and then you refuse to draw outside the lines.”

“This is getting a little too deep for me,” Dean says.

Cas blinks at him innocently. “Perhaps we should move on to the part where you get a little too deep, if you understand my meaning.”

Dean chokes on his own spit—which is _real_ sexy, obviously, but it doesn’t slow them down much.

“These lines,” Cas murmurs, tracing Dean’s shoulder and collarbone and sternum with his fingertips as he uncovers them one by one, “I would not change at all.”


End file.
